Read Binary Block Data from 3rd Party Instruments Screenshot via GPIB

Reported In

Reported In shows products that are verified to work for the solution described in this article. This solution might also apply to other similar products or applications.

Hardware

GPIB-USB-HS

Software

LabVIEW Full

LabVIEW Base

Driver

NI-VISA

Issue Details

I have a 3rd party spectrum analyzer connected with computer via GPIB. I want to use LabVIEW to receive the analyzer's screenshot. The data type of the screenshot sent from the analyzer is a IEEE754 binary block data. I know that the VISA command to acquire screenshot should based on 3rd party instruments' user manual, but how do I read the binary block data in LabVIEW?

Solution

In LabVIEW, you can use VISA Read/Write to command 3rd party to acquire screenshot as shown in Figure 1 (Main VI), and the SubVI as shown in Figure 2 (SubVI) reads the contents of a binary block to a file. This will work with binary blocks that follow the IEEE 754 format. It uses the VISA protocol to communicate to the device. It will remove the header information from the file content prior to writing the binary file.

Figure 1 (Main VI)

Figure 2 (SubVI)

Additional Information

The command used in Figure 1 (Main VI) is an example used in Agilent PSA Series Spectrum Analyser, so the command may be different due to different companies' instruments, please confirm the correct commands with the corresponding company.